Hi, In IRC we were wondering why the Freerunner, being a USB-OTG-Host (according to the OTG spec), only has a USB Mini-B interface (black jack). This means that only USB-Mini-B cables can be used in that jack, what causes that USB-OTG cables can't be used. The Freerunner is clearly a device that should have a Mini-AB port (grey jack), means it can be used as a client (over standard Mini-B plugs) or as a OTG-Host (over standard Mini-A plugs). It is only as small issue - the electric layout of both jacks is basically the same (means the Mini-B-jack can be replaced without changing layout or something else with Mini-AB) - but it has some major sideeffects: 1. The Freerunner will _not_ be USB-OTG-compliant, means this great feature can't be advertised for enduser products (as you may have noticed: most vendors advertise USB-OTG heavily if their product supports it). 2. It will be hard to use the OTG-feature at all, because a standard-compliant adapter is mostly mini-A to standard-B (or similar). There might be some cheap mini-B to standard-B adapters, but they are not standard-compliant and may cause problems with some specific devices. 3. Without being able to advertise the feature endusers won't even know that this device can act as USB-OTG-host, because the black mini-B jack implies that the device is only a client. Like said before: it would be possible to change the jack without changing the board layout at all. But as the mini-AB-jack has a minimal different shape it would need to change the breakout in the case, so I don't see any chance to get this done in the current stage. We just wanted to point that out, to give OM Inc. a chance to fix this issue.
Greetings, thomasg
_______________________________________________ Openmoko community mailing list [email protected] http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community

